Race report- City2Surf

A 12km totally flat race from Christchurch cathedral square out to QE2 sports stadium (interestingly and rather disappointingly about 2km from any beach or surf!). Course map here

I was surprised just how big an affair this race was. It would rank as a large race in Europe. I can only guess at moment but I reckon there were a few thousand in it. Lots of walkers and kids on scooters etc etc and plenty of joggers and also decent runners.

Something else which is different to Europe was the price to enter. I had a late entry and it cost $10 (about £4). I got a bottle of water at the end and all the roads were closed to traffic. This sort of event would cost in excess of £25 in UK and if sponsored by Nike it would cost £60+

The race:

Naively, I started too far back in field and for the first two km I was sometimes walking, sometimes jogging and swerving walkers, scooters etc. Still not really going properly until about 3km as many runners had underestimated their abilities and had slowed considerably or even started to walk.

Decided that I wasn't going to do the race flat out so for once I remained calm (yes Chris, no Mr Grumpy in this race) and got into my stride when I could. No km markers that I could see before the 7km marker so didn't do splits but noticed time at 10km was something like 45mins. Kept up the pace I was running at quite well and finished the 12km in something like 54mins (wiped the data from watch!). Considering I lost about 2 mins to walking and dodging etc and could probably have done the course a bit quicker e.g. 60-90 secs I was quite pleased with this. I haven't run on roads at all for months and have done very little on the trails really. Thus somewhere around 7min miling if you subtract the couple of mins lost.

Finished the day with the run home (map here) which took 1:16 to cover 13km (8.1miles). Rather hot though so not too bad